


And Everyone Must Breathe

by andyouknowitis



Series: The 'And...' Series [1]
Category: One Direction, One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 03:07:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1589429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyouknowitis/pseuds/andyouknowitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He looks up at the face, so familiar now, even with all the changes he makes. The hair is new. Again. The stubble arranged in a way that is different from the day before. And he knows that they’re his own kind of masks. Changes for changing days. Chameleon. But still, beneath it all, a constant.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He’s not surprised when those hands move up his thighs, past his hips and settle on his stomach with a light touch, brushing up the edge of his t-shirt. Nor when they skim back down , bringing the waistband of his bottoms and his boxers with them. It’s far from the first time, and he never knows when it could be the last. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He doesn’t know what to call it, this….thing he does for him, apart from the obvious, which isn’t really everything it is. It’s not just...that. It’s something in a friendship, that’s unlike any other he’s ever known. He’d known that, even back in the early days, when it was just drunken curiosity with no real heat behind it. Young minds met with an innocent kiss or two. Laughed at, and left behind.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Everyone Must Breathe

 “So….”, he let the unspoken question hang in the air before continuing, “Why didn’t you just tell them to fuck off and that you wanted a bit of quiet before the show?”

Liam blinked against the hazy darkness that was the sleep bus. The show was over, but his mind had yet to come down from the day and find a place to settle. He shifted against the bunk, tried to will the tension away. That he had a perfectly good hotel room was neither here nor there. He had just needed to crawl into a familiar space.

“The girls, not the snakes y’know…although..”

He could almost hear the smile in his voice, laced in the soft tones of his accent. Him being here is not completely unexpected. He knew he’d find him if he wanted to. He always did. In the same way he knew the reasons he didn’t mention this to him earlier, because what it seemed, wasn’t really what it was.

He let his eyes adjust as he felt rather than saw him climb in beside him, settling his slim thighs around Liam’s right one. His features seemed to catch the light in the dark. Liam felt the sigh move through his body as the silence drew out between them. Not a bad silence. Never that. But he knew he was waiting for him to speak. To say something.

“There were really snakes there…there was really a sign…I just…”

“I know Li…I know.” Liam felt his hands massage his thigh lightly, soothing hands, long fingers drawn in small circles. “But Li…y’know…no-one can be Batman all of the time..saving a life once..”, his hands work against him and he wonders if he can feel how hot his skin feels, even through the thick tracksuit bottoms, ”Or a hundred times…doesn’t mean you never need some time away from it all.” His hands paused. “Even from being Bruce Wayne.”

And he knows he’s not talking about snakes anymore. He knows that he knows, as much as anyone, that the price of getting the life you always wanted, is getting the life you once wanted. He never wanted to see people hurt, not at his hands, and yet more and more he feels failure, hanging from his shoulders like a cloak. The person he is now, is someone he no longer knows. He keeps trying to go back to the Liam from when this all started, hoping that if he can get everything just so again, he’ll feel the way he once did. He doesn’t know why he seems to feel it more and more. _It._  Like a poison seeping through his skin, he doesn’t know why the others seem to handle it better, even knowing, as he thinks it, that’s it’s not quite true, that the ways they do are just different. Both crippling and clean.

He looks up at the face, so familiar now, even with all the changes he makes. The hair is new. Again. The stubble arranged in a way that is different from the day before. And he knows that they’re his own kind of masks. Changes for changing days. _Chameleon._  But still, beneath it all, a constant.

He’s not surprised when those hands move up his thighs, past his hips and settle on his stomach with a light touch, brushing up the edge of his t-shirt. Nor when they skim back down , bringing the waistband of his bottoms and his boxers with them. It’s far from the first time, and he never knows when it could be the last. He doesn’t know what to call it, this….thing he does for him, apart from the obvious, which isn’t really everything it is. It’s not just... _that._  It’s something in a friendship, that’s unlike any other he’s ever known. He’d known that, even back in the early days, when it was just drunken curiosity with no real heat behind it. Young minds met with an innocent kiss or two. Laughed at, and left behind.

This was different. It wasn’t from the beginning, but from somewhere in the middle. As the days and nights away got longer, somewhere between getting lost in break-ups and one night stands, and trying to find a new way home. Maybe he tries to justify it, letting it live somewhere outside their other relationships, even knowing that things aren’t always what they seem, and in a life like his, like theirs, things weren’t always conventional. More open somehow, by necessity. He wasn’t good at any of this, and had never been any good at being alone. He needed the…steadiness. Or maybe, closer to the truth, the illusion of it. He wasn’t sure anymore. But he also needed this. He didn’t want to, couldn’t, explain that sometimes the only person who could come close to understanding what it was like to live this kind of life, was someone who was living it too, right beside you.

So he lets it happen. And it’s strange and now familiar and not like any other way he’s used to. He doesn’t really…do anything. But maybe that’s not right either. It’s not just happening without him..he feels it all..the heat..and the connection..but just…he doesn’t touch him back. He’s never seen him come. It’s not like..well..like what he supposes he’d expected..if he thought about it. It’s just more that he…looks after him. He’s always the one who holds him a little longer when he needs it. Who keeps the world at bay and soothes the hurts away. He’s never been with another guy and he doesn’t think he ever will be. But this, here and now, this feels right…because it’s him.

Sometimes he wonders, if he thinks too long, thinks of the right thing, if he’s being selfish, in too many ways. Sometimes he feels guilty and conflicted and worshipped and confused. And hard.

He feels hard now. Firm strokes of slender fingers make his breath hitch and fall. Already angled up, so ready. It isn’t words here, but touches. Of hands and lips and skin. He’s never been one to hurry things, and now is no exception. A thumb grazes his left hip, and holds him steady there before releasing, his legs pushed apart with firm hands so that mouth can brush his inner thighs. There’s the graze of stubble and the almost pleasure pain he starts to feel at the sucking on the skin there. It’s not gentle, he’ll leave marks in places that will only be seen by those who know better than to ask. So many times, new patches of skin, drawn in hard and hot and he wants him to stop and he wants him to never stop. The part of his mind that isn’t already drifting and rising thinks idly of snakebites and how his would be a great mouth for sucking out..what is that thing..venom. Taking all the poison away.

And then he can’t think anymore because that mouth, that hot mouth, is so very near his cock and he needs it there. He wants it there. His breath is a soft hiss, as teeth softly graze the underside, before a wet tongue soothes and draws one of his balls into that mouth again. That mouth. Always so surprising and different and so fucking good that he can’t keep his hips still. He feels dizzy with want and need and he wants to fuck that mouth.  _Hard._ Harder than he ever lets himself, with anyone. He wants to hold on. And he wants to let go.

Those lips move up his cock, licking here and there, the tip, a hand up and down and under. His mouth slips over him with a soft murmer of ‘mmmm’ and he feels too much, and says too little. He’s awash with the sensation more than the thought, he can’t think right now; that this is someone who would never let anything bad happen to him. That gives him what he needs even when he doesn’t know he needs it. That can make him feel like  _this._

His mouth sinks further around him and he can only feel, as he reaches out blindly with his left hand, and grips the arm that brushes against his hip again. He holds on tight, so tight, his palm damp, as he grips his wrist so tightly, pressed against the mattress, that he knows he’ll leave a bruise. He can’t stop himself grinding his hips against his face, pushing his cock deeper, that wet sound, that hot heat, driving him to the edge. He’s babbling words, whispered, gasped, fallen out. He’d never really thought he had a dirty mouth before this, but it’s like he can says the words no-one else will ever hear with him. And here he’s not the sensible one. Or the quiet one. Or anyone’s hero. He’s just a man who’s forgotten how to be a boy. A boy who can ask for what he wants.

He worked his hips with his words, all feeling. “Oh fuck…yeah…there..take it…take my cock..take it all…you like me fucking your mouth…so good…you want it harder…I’ll give it to you…you like making my cock hard don’t you…don’t you…uh…you can take it..you can take it…I wanna come in your mouth…I’m gonna come..I’m gonna come..take it all..oh fuck..fuck..oh fuck yeah..you’re so good..so..fuck..oh god…oh yeah.”

He goes silent, his mouth formed around a moan that won’t come out. He’s coming hard, taken in, coming apart in that mouth and those hands. His heart stuttering, his mind filled, until he’s all but forgotten his own name.

They lie there, seconds, minutes, he can’t count, the brush of hair against his stomach, a hand against his rib-cage, as if to steady his breathing. As things come back into focus he realises he’s still holding his wrist, and he loosens his grip slowly, by degrees, not quite wanting to lose the contact, the brush of his thumb a silent apology for any hurt he’s given. Lips brush across his chest, linger on his collarbone for a moment, an inhaled breath, before he skirts up past his mouth to the curl of his left ear and it’s a soft murmur, in just that way he has. “You know think maybe I’ll be safe in that field now…now that I’ve had a taste of that antidote of yours.”

And he can feel the laugh bubble up from somewhere within, if not out loud, from a place he sometimes forgets still exists. The slender form shifts over him and brushes a knuckle against his cheek, before those fingers skirt down his jawline. There’s a brief pause and a little buss on the chin. “Sleep now,” is all he says as he pulls himself up and away, quickly blending into the shadows, footfalls fading away, the soft snap of the bus door echoing behind him, and it’s almost like he was never there.

Liam smiled at the ceiling of the bunk above, a flash of light against the darkness.

_Almost._

_*_

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a one-shot (which grew into a series) based around the now infamous snake habitat tweet of September 24th 2013. It took me by surprise and I wrote it in a single sitting, during downtime at work, in a quiet art room, where I found words. 
> 
> I very definitely love Ziam as a thing, in whatever capacity they exist within. I am utterly intrigued by their dynamic, and the softer side they've always brought out in one another, unlike how they are with anyone else. I find them both fascinating as individuals, and I was interested in exploring the complexities of such a friendship, made something more. I just never thought I’d write something…and then one day I did. This was my take on just how it might be.


End file.
